On Demand
WNYC's Coverage of the Democratic National Convention
Live performances in Soundcheck's studios
Studio 360: How Animals Communicate with Each Other
Selected Shorts featuring "The Trouble of Marcie Flint," by John Cheever
Radio Rookies: Brooklyn Broadcast Workshop
On the Media: Challenging Convention
Street Shots Challenge
Survival Kit Archive
September 2003
Robert MacNeil
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Robert MacNeil has covered most of the major news stories of the last fifty years: the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the assassination of JFK, Watergate, September 11; and as co-anchor of the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour for 20 years, he helped shape our consciousness of world events. He’s also written novels and works of non-fiction examining the nature of language and the news business. Let’s try to find out what makes this respected newsman tick, by taking a look in his survival kit.
Margaret Atwood
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Margaret Atwood seems like the perfect guest; she’s been writing about survival all her life. Her novel, Oryx and Crake, follows the lone survivor of a catastrophic worldwide epidemic; she’s written a collection of stories called Wilderness Tips; her novel, Surfacing, depicts a woman alone on a remote island; and in her scholarly study, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, she argues that this is the major theme of her native land. The subject has also cropped up in her novels The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin, and Alias Grace. Let’s turn the tables and ask this prolific writer what she would put in her survival kit.
Elmore Leonard
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Elmore Leonard has written over 3 dozen crime novels (Glitz, Get Shorty, Cuba Libre, Out of Sight, Pagan Babies and Tishomingo Blues to name just a few) which examine, in meticulous detail, the seamy underside of American cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Detroit. They’re peopled with offbeat characters: cops, millionaires, stuntmen, cowboys, loan sharks, drug dealers, pimps and hookers. It makes me wonder what kind of underworld he’ll discover in the wilds of Montana, or on a desert island. Let’s see what he’s packed in his survival kit to protect him from the treacherous wildlife he’ll undoubtedly encounter there.
B.D. Wong
Sunday, September 07, 2003
B.D. Wong has always resisted being typecast. He’s played a prison chaplain in the HBO series Oz, a transvestite opera star in M. Butterfly, a psychiatrist in Law and Order: SVU, and the sweet-natured Linus in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. His films have included Father of the Bride I and II, Jurassic Park, Seven Years in Tibet, and Mulan. He’s also been an outspoken advocate for Asian-American artists, and has shared the story of the premature birth of his son in his memoir, Following Foo. With all of that in mind, I’m curious about what he’d put in his cultural survival kit.